About
John Messenger

John is Director, Global Standards for ADVA Optical Networking, part of the CTO team. In this role he is responsible for standards strategy and representation of standards positions by the company's engineers, as well as communicating about standards within and outside the company. John's background is in software and ASIC engineering, and he has been involved in the standardisation of computer networks since 1987.

How do Ethernet networks identify and segregate streams of customer data as they are transported through a metro or regional network? How do service providers deploy Virtual LAN services, allowing the cost-effective provision of Ethernet services over transport networks? In this post, I look at current solutions and their limitations, and describe some new technologies designed to enhance this market segment.

Continuing my exploration of next-generation Ethernet encapsulation technologies, in this post I look at MPLS-TP, TRILL and Provider Link State Bridging. These technologies are all currently under development in ITU-T, IETF and IEEE.

MPLS-TP

Originally begun in ITU-T as T-MPLS, this project is now incorporated into the MPLS work of the IETF, and has become a set of extensions and simplifications to MPLS. Multi-Protocol Label Switching is a well established, successful (but ageing) core network technology, and forms the basis of almost every major Carrier Ethernet transport network worldwide.